Penguins!!!

In 1D we’ve embarked on an Antarctic adventure. It’s been all penguins all day for the past week now that's just is just the tip of of the iceberg (pun intended). I know, I know.

This fascination with penguins all began when we began reading Mr. Popper’s Penguins. Several students had seen the movie and were intrigued by the differences between the book and movie. This is actually what sparked our Antarctic unit and it has made it’s way into every subject all throughout the day.

In language, we wrote our sentences to diagram about penguins. In math, we graphed favorite animals and of course, penguins made the list. In Social Studies, we’re all about the penguins’ habitat and how they live in colonies. And reading, oh my. If you were to stop by our room in the morning you would see some full fledged scientific research underway. Students each have their own research notebooks and have been vigorously searching through books and kid-friendly websites and search engines to find answers to their questions, recording their findings in their journals, and even writing poetry about their favorite penguins.

We’ve also been watching clips about penguins from National  Geographic and BBC, and got a great laugh from this short clip. My little folks watched it probably 7 times in a row and it elicited the same lively response from my first grade audience each time...  enjoy!

Pizza Pie

I uploaded photos off my camera this week and founds some gems that were just too good not to share! These are actually from before Christmas (I know, I know), but better late than never right! ;)

This is when we were learning about fractions. We created a pizza shop called “Gator’s Pizza” (thus the gator hats) and as orders came in, students had to top the pizza’s with “pepperonis” according to requests.

I just got the brightlink in my room midway through this school year and it has been such an incredible  addition! We use it in literally EVERY subject - from bible to reading - and my students are becoming so tech-savy these days. I cannot sing it’s praises highly enough. I can’t imagine going back to teaching without it!

After the pizza shop sent out all it’s orders, we turned our attention to pie. Literally. As in, apple. Here, one of my first grade fellas is slicing it into eighths. 

Then we made our own apple pies, and ordered the steps we took to create them. We made it all from scratch and students measured out amounts of flour, butter etc. to make the dough - some real life fractions! I used a muffin tins so the pies could be individual and students could each experiment with their own spices and sugars. After they came out of the oven, we wrote about it and used ordinal numbers (math skill of the week) to catalog each step.

Calm Down Jar

This is one of my new favorite things. It works like a charm in the classroom and I can think of no reason it wouldn’t work great at home too. Meet the “calm down jar” 

(I used plastic for the ones in our classroom for extra safety)

Here is how it works: When a child is having a difficult time settling down, is throwing a fit, or just needs some time gather their thoughts, they can go to a special area in our classroom and use the calm down jar. They shake it up, set it down, and watch all the little pieces of glitter settle. I tell my students that each little piece of glitter is like all their thoughts and feeling swirling around in their body and mind. As the glitter settles, so do their thoughts and feelings. As soon as they are calm again, they come an rejoin our class. This is usually no more than 2 minutes and makes a world of difference in communicating with students. Have you ever tried to talk sense into a child that's throwing a fit? Just doesn’t work... but this certainly does!

Here is how to make your own: 

Fill up an old bottle (empty water bottles work great) with warm water. 

Add a drop or 2 or 3 of food coloring (blue is supposed to be calming, so that’s what I use).

Add half a bottle of Elmer’s gel glue.

Add any color and sized glitter you like... I like mixing colors and sizes. 

Feel free to leave a comment if you have any questions!

Shine Like Stars

Have you taken a look at the night sky lately? Yesterday morning our class turned out all the lights and gazed at pictures of the stars in our universe... then we read this verse:

Do everything without complaining or arguing so you may shine like stars in the universe... 

Philippians 2:24